Lightning Strike
Lightning Strike (Cork O’Connor, 18) William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781982128692) 2022.
Summary: In this prequel, Cork as a twelve year old finds a body hanging in a tree but his father is not convinced it was suicide.
Twelve-year-old Cork O’Connor and his friend Jorge are exploring an abandoned logging camp called Lightning Strike. It is a sacred place for the Ojibwe. But what the boys find this day is death. A body is hanging from a tree. They recognize it as Big John Manydeeds. They also think they see a spirit in the trees, a scary apparition. The boys report what they’ve seen to Cork’s father, Liam O’Connor, who in 1963 is sheriff of Aurora.
On the face of things, it looks like Big John had committed suicide. There were empty bottles of Four Roses whiskey nearby. Big John was an alcoholic, although he had reformed and stayed sober in recent years. There was alcohol in his blood. Liam found more empties at his cabin, although they didn’t have any fingerprints. Some things weren’t adding up, and Liam has to face the possibility that it was a murder.
Two suspects emerge. One is Duncan MacDermid, one of the richest men in the area. It turns out his wife was having an affair with Big John. But would the law dare to go against the most powerful man in the county? The other suspect was his brother Oscar. When Big John had been drinking they fought frequently. And when subsequent toxicology shows a barbiturate in Big John’s blood that Oscar used with his animals, focus intensifies on him.
But accusing one of The People threatens to divide the White and Indigenous parts of the town. And this division runs through Liam’s own family. His mother-in-law Dilsey is Anishinaabe and his wife is half Anishinaabe. As much as they love and respect Liam, they fear another in the string of betrayals Indigenous peoples experienced from broken promises and displacements to the horrors of boarding schools. However, Liam is determined to follow the evidence. But he is challenged to listen to his heart as well as his head.
To complicate things, a young runaway Indigenous girl has gone missing. Liam and his department have to investigate this as well. Eventually, her body is found floating in a nearby lake with signs of violence on her body. Two murders.
Meanwhile, Cork believes he has a part to play. He saw what he believed the spirit of Big John, unable to walk the Path of Souls. He wonders what part he has to play. Henry Meloux, the mide, can only cryptically encourage him to “follow the crumbs.” And so he and his friends do. They eventually find Big John’s missing canoe, smashed up. And they locate where the young girl died. But this will put them in danger in the page-turning climax.
As a prequel, the book reveals how Cork begins to discover his own calling, one which in many respects follows his father. Readers of the series know Cork’s father died in a bank robbery when he saved an old woman wandering into the line of fire. An epilogue recounts those events. And Sam Winter Moon, a family friend tells Cork that his father was ogichidaa, one who stands between evil and his people. And he tells Cork he believes that Cork was also born ogichidaa. Cork has a long path to traverse before embracing that identity. But we see the first steps here.
